Nothing for Xmas

LOOKS LIKE I'M DOING N O T H I N G for Xmas this year. Boo-hoo!

The girl in the local shop asked what I was doing. I said why? She said because I'm working here! I said well I'll bring you a turkey sandwich. I make very good sandwiches. She smiled at that.

Anyway she's a Muslim!!

I found another entertaining article in The Sun newspaper about someone who got a Chinese tattoo... only to discover several years later that it doesn't say what she thought it said.

"Stunned Joanne Raine had lover Andrew Blanche's nickname "roo" tattoed in Chinese on her tum - and found out after they broke up that it said SUPERMARKET.

Joanne paid £80 for the tattoo in 2004 but only discovered its meaning days ago when she flashed it in a Chinese takeaway.

The Darlington lass, 19, said: "My friends are laughing but I'm embarrassed."

Worried about your Chinese tattoo? Email us a picture to features@the-sun.co.uk

Silly cow. If she knew anything about Chinese she'd know they don't have the sound R in their language. (It's the Japanese who don't have L. Thais have both but still mix the two up even in their own native tongue!)

Who'd get a tattoo in a foreign language they can't even read. Aparently David Beckham's Hindi tattoo across one arm has a spelling mistake in the graceful Devanagari script.

I don't blame Chinese takeaway staff for writing down jokes:

Here's another one:

... Proud Vince Mattingley, 44, who thought he'd had his name tattooed on his chest for 26 years, just found out the actual words read Coca Cola!

The actual "Chinese traditional" for Coca~Cola is 可口可樂 so it seems even The Sun newspaper got that wrong too. (Maybe the original tattoo was too rude to repeat in English.)

By the way Coca~Cola in Japanese is コカコーラ. They use the katakana syllablary to spell out foreign words. (& incidentally for onomatapoeic words like su-zoom (スズメバチ) suzume-bachi, which means hornet!) A バチ bachi in Japanese is a bee or wasp type buzzing critter fly thing...

Wanna know more about the misuse of Chinese characters in western culture? Go to this website:
http://www.hanzismatter.com

IT HAS BEEN UTTERLY FREEZING COLD THE LAST FEW DAYS AND NIGHTS (down to -5C in Norwich, where I used to live). So cold I've been waking shivering under my psychedelic pink and yellow blanket (where on earth Mother Hubbs found that one I'd love to know...) and had had to turn on BOTH rings of the hob to warm up.

Even my drug dealer was complaining it was too cold to come out of his car. But then drug dealers just want extortionate heroin profits without ever feeling beholden to their customers (which they are - for all that spare Chinese takeaway, cigarettes, mobile top-up, Playstation games, CDs, DVDs and all the other ephemera they blow their profits on money ...

I HAVE STASHED MY ROBBIES back in their tartan washing bag to keep warm. As for people who say that is cruel (to keep them in a fishtank in a bag, or to shove the tank in a cupboard or something) how can it be? As burrow-dwelling rodents who only venture out under cover of thick darkness they actually feel far more comfortable wrapped up like that. Like most other rodents they are short-sighted (one olde Englishe word for short-sighted was "mouse sight") - so they don't appreciate views. Views are things predators use in the wild to catch and eat such scampery furry morsels.

That silly Itchy went nuts the other day. Twice actually. One time she was so severely spooked by the running of a tap she took to darting up and down my arms and threatening to ping off... the second time the rustling of a carrier bag actually did upset her so much she did a backflip onto that famous pink-and-yellow blanket!

BACK TO THE CHILLY WEATHER. We have no heating or hot water at all! The repairman spent all yesterday running hosepipes out of the house. Then seemed totally to give up at around 4pm (which gladdened my heart as I hate having workmen in the house. Leaving the front-door unlocked all the time as they do...)

... and leaving our house like an ICEBOX at the same time!

And how was YOUR day?

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QUIZ OF THE DAY:
Do you think this baby is a boy or a girl?
Clickonthis and study the ultrasounds....
I really can barely see a baby let alone what sex!!

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Lorrikeets on a Queenslander's lawn!
This comes from Bimbimbie's blog,
which means "gledeber of the birds" in a mysterious Aboriginal tongue!

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VIDEO OF THE DAY:
Victoria Wood: Let's Do ItThis is 1980s comedy classic

Mourn Day Monday/Baby Itchy Waffle/ Stew blah blahs...

NOBODY'S DIED. IT'S NOT THAT BAD. I'm just feeling depressed (what's new).

Got a knock at some properly unearthly hour on Saturday night. It was Windorello downstairs (another person I've not really mentioned. Reformed crackhead windowcleaner.) He and a rather chic Irish woman with Chanel style bob. Both had the most massively dilated pupils I've seen in quite a while. They looked like they should have been waving light-sticks at the front of a rave. I didn't ask what they'd taken but I'm sure it was the killer "sweeties" ("E"). Did you know ecstasy pills cost just $1 or 50p each nowadays? How weak must they be perishes my thoughts, but WOW! That is cheap. First time I ever tried one it cost £15! For one white tablet with a bird stamped into one side ("love doves").

Unlike the so-called "love drug of the 1960s" LSD which only perhaps 2% of my parents' generation ever took, if that, ecstasy, I would say has been sampled by a third of my generation (and that's a conservative estimate). Also, unlike the fantastical but unpredictable LSD, ecstasy really does make you feel "love". Love for everyone in the world. (And unfortunately the sort of nonsensical talk that accompanies such "love".) If you could capture in pill form the sensation of a really good tune and wanting to dance, together with the first full flush of falling in love, that's Ecstasy.

Unfortunatlely the more frequently you pop the pill the more quickly the "lovey" feeling dies. What remains is a "feeling of heightened perceptions" and the wanting to dance thing. But the eurphoria is never the same as the first few times.

There have been some dramatic cases in the British news of young people dying on ecstasy pills. Something like 15-20 people a year used to die on ecstasy during its 1990s heydays. (Not sure about now.) A statistic that had police chiefs foaming at the mouth! What went unreported was that more people in this country actually drowned in the bath over those years than died taking ecstasy. And nobody campaigned to ban baths!

OK onto less controversial topics I'm making beef stew and our central heating pipes are being drained (yet again).

Baby Itchy's really furry and I'm going to try and get a youtube video of her done.

When, over the weekend, I knelt over them and cooed "Come out you tiny tubbies! Come out! Come out you tubby gremlins!" in the kind of voice that would have a young puppydog tearing about the room and baying at the ceiling all three pink noses appear and Itchy, being pluckiest starts pinging tube to tube and burning butter on her wheel (it's oiled with butter (well you can't use WD40 on a hamster wheel, can you?))

On that note I'd better go.

Have a click on my video of the day if you're in a Spanish cultural mood.

Video of the Day:
Jeanette (Cria Cuervos): Porque te vas

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THEE most marvellous-looking Chocolate Brownie recipe

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Her Majesty the Queen is on BBC1 tonight at 21:00 hrs sharp so all loyal citizens (sorry WHAT am I saying: SUBJECTS) are hereby called to the Cause!

STOP PRESS: VIDEO OF THE DAY II
HM THE QUEEN'S REPRIMANDY ENCOUNTER WITH VULGAR PLEBEAN ANNIE LIEBOWITZ


Citizens of the United States and Canada should be able to watch it on BBC America/BBC Canada. Though my brother, who used to have a very posh address in Los Angeles said his last building was too vulgar to have BBC America so it does depend on your "cable provider". (Here satellite is far better. For one thing you still get 100+ channels after you stop subscribing so why mess around with crappy old cable. I did notice the box at the end of my street hanging open with "virgin cable" signs and wires everywhere but have no idea how to pirate cable. Can you do that with digital cable? Nobody uses analogue over here except one person I know who used to subscribe, plugged her telly back into the old cable socket - and presto! - gets 12 channels instead of the analogue 5. I'm the ONLY person I know, apart from Laundretta, who still watches analogue TV. Even mother hubbard has the 30-channel "ghetto" version of digital. I'm waiting till I can get a flat digital TV the size of a lady's powder compact. Not THAT I would watch. (Must be high definition. Of course...)

Re my Annie Liebowitz clip of the day: I've been searching since that docu started showing for youtube clips and for some reason NOBODY in Britain's posted ANYTHING up. Guess where this clip came from? CHINA!!!

Silly cow Liebowitz. I am SURE she was briefed on what to call the Queen. And she kept on banging away at "Your Majesty" you only call her that the FIRST time you address her. Every subsequent time she is "Ma'am" (only to her face, my own 3rd person ma'am is my little joke, in case I ever do meet her, at least I'll think of her as ma'am then. Well that's what I tell myself.)

And REALLY. Buckingham Palace booking Her Majesty the Queen, NOT the most overbeamingly stellar person in the world for HALF AN HOUR to get FOUR SETS of lovely photos. Whoever did THAT wants FIRING. I've seen the Liebowitz with "crown" (it is actually a tiara) by window in drawing room photo. It is terrible. Her Maj looks THUNDEROUS. There is a stray chair in the background as if someone had been jumping around on the furniture just before and couldn't be bothered to move it. No! PUT HER IN THE TOWER! I say (Liebowitz. Not the Queen.) Right:

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Thing on the news about American Iraq deserters. They don't get much of my sympathy. I'm sorry but what do you join the army for? To do lots of obstacle courses or to kill foreigners? Who ever told these young idiots you ever got a choice of which foreigners you got to kill and why.... I don't know

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So Rickky Hatton LOST against the American. (Boxing: 4:20am our time Sunday morning.) The rude British crowd managed to outsing the American national anthem (surely the only song on earth LESS catchy than "God save the Queen" (!)) Glad I forgot to get to the betting shop on Sat night, else I'd have lost my money on Hatton by round four! Why did nobody tell us HE was the challenger and the reigning champion was so very formidable~??

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My stew is fantastic by the way. Cubed beef (not lamb full of boney bits). And finally I remembered to get Worcester Sauce (the Brit ex-pat's fantasy cooking ingredient)... yum...

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When I grow up and move abroad I'm going to start up an English takeaway. Yes I know this has been the butt of jokes for... since as long as Chinese takeaways have existed in Britain. But I'd really do it. (Not fish and chips: I'm talking about roast beef, chips (fries) and steaming seasonable vegetables with cauliflower cheese and YORKSHIRE PUDDING (sorry I left that out originally) and gravy type takeaway. The type that does not to the best of my knowledge exist to this day...

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I want to go for a poke round Harrods one of these days ...

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Robos: Bashful is asleep. She has been grooming poor Itchy to within an inch of her life. Itchy was so bashed up with hamster-salyva when I first got her out of the box I honestly thought she was covered in mites. Just turns out because she's smallest she's lowest peck and so has to endure her relatives' endless "attentions" all night and day ...

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Wonderful pictures of Argentinian December summer!

Weekend Wonder

HI! Where has all my time gone!?

Gone gone gone...

... I have an idea for a short story that I'm going to plan out and try my hand at penning.

If it does nothing else - knowing I'm meant to write that might put me off writing that an back ON to writing my memoirs yet again... so I'm hoping to get SOMETHING written at least! I've not done much in the way of memoirs for over three weeks now. Trawling my unpleasant memories was too depressing ...

Well I gotta go it's late and I'm out of time.

Have a brilliant weekend everyone and I'll be back MONDAY.

G
xx

Tame Fox and Laundretta Sceeching

I WAS GOING TO WRITE OUT A LONG LONG POST but somehow am not in the frame of mind for posting longlonglongwinded things.

Matran is back on the crack. Laundretta was screaming and yelling at some unearthly hour of the night then stomped off down the stairs to catterwaul and holler on the street last night so I should have known then.

I saw a fox last night! It was literally hand-feeding distance. And I had Jaffa Cakes on me. Of course the necessity of opening the packet scared her off (dunno why but it looked like a she). I threw one down the street and she ran across the road. But the amount of vermin on my street I knew it would not go to waste...

We have pigeons in our pack garden! They sit on a green totally moss covered psychedelically bright tree (well it is under a certain morning light). If I had a camera I'd have photo'd it.

Instead you have to click to see the picture of today. It is Welshcakes with her puppydog Simi ...

Have a pleasant weekend everyone!

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Video:
Doggie Dating

Weary Rainy Furry Afternoon...

WELL IT'S A RAINY FURRY AFTERNOON. All my gremlins are dozing in their toilet tubes. The parmesan box still stinks of wee-wee.

Very weary indeed I am. Extremely weary. And tired. And just wanting to go sleep and sleep for hours.

Three dreams I've had I can remember. Dream one: with a staffordshire bull terrier in a council house urban park with railways running underneath. I'm throwing a frisbee to a magnificently over-eager fit doggie who charges around. (Haven't a clue what this dream means.) Dream two: Me looking into my eyes in mirror. My pupils are heavily dilated. Maybe I've taken ecstasy or am in withdrawals but my eyes look like dinner plates. This dream kind of came on contextless at the end of the night before last... no idea why... Dream three: a horror dream. Being chased by people round my old school which had lots of internal miniquads (you know, interior tiny gardens to let light into classrooms... they were so tiny and barely EVER opened up. Just weed ridden. Never saw anybody go in there. Which I was wondering about in my dream until somebody who was stalking me chased me into the dreamers' laundrette. And then I was persuaded INSIDE a washing machine. And then my evil pursuer SHUT THE DOOR ON ME!!! I woke up feeling suffocated... ugh! That was a nasty one.

Boney M's River's of Babylon is still going round my head after yesterday's posting as song of the day...

Nottalotmoretosay... my head is spinning. Pricking needles into my legs this morning (lovely heroin). Baby Itchy bleary headed emerging from toilet tube upon my cries of "come out you fat pink nose!" then running 21 to the dozen on the wheel like a pinging tubby fieldfragrant smell of fresh corn mousie. Her furr has the most wondrous smell when she is fresh and has not been sleeping in her own wee (the swine!)... as I say, like fresh fields in summer...

Before I go I must ask you: has everyone heard the canoist scandal?!? The Sun newspaper's cartoonist portrayed it best... a man paddling rapidly against a craggy gorge with "SH*T CREEK" on a huge sign... leafery growing over the letter "i"... two leering policemen holding up the poor man's paddle!
Basically this man, a keen champion canoist, went to see one day five years ago never to return. He hauled himself into a police station on Saturday saying he "might be reported missing" and "could not remember anything at all from the past five years" (how then did he know he might be reported missing? and what made him hand himself in to police if he'd done nothing wrong? if I were in an innocent situation like that I'd go straight back to my family. Police would be the last thing on my mind...) Anyway, it turns out his wife had recently emigrated to Panama. Sold up their house, everything and vanished out there. PLUS following an open but favourable coroner's verdict on his "death"... she claimed on his life insurance! Then one of the newspapers dredges up a photo of man and wife together IN PANAMA - last year!
The scandal deepens!
The man is under arrest now.
His buck-teethed wife is avoiding the bloodthirsty British press like the living pox...
... and I'm sure this will end in twice as many tears as have already been shed...

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PS Slight exaggeration of my reportage on HM the Queen throwing sticky buns at her corgis yesterday. However it IS true that she has lots of cakes delivered that she never touches (just feeds to her dogs...)

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Have a nice day everyone!

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Videos of the Day:
Puppies Discovering the World Aged 7 Weeks
Streisand: Moonfall
Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand: You'll Never Know

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PS Dolly Parton's literacy project came to the UK yesterday for a launch in the (fairly obscure) Yorkshire town of Rotherham!

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Japan Advertisement Special!

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German-speaking person's Spanish Buildings Blog

They're well worth a look!

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Here's an Argentinian island that is not chilly windswept and freezing cold like the Argentine-claimed "Malvinas" (Falklands).

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Thailand

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Top Irish model Katy French, who had admitted to "doing cocaine" has died after an illness that left her comatose in hospital for the past four days. The model star of the RTE series Celebrities Go Wild was 24 years old.

BTW I got this info originally from the BBC's most "respectable" news prog, Radio 4's news at midnight. "Celebrities Go Wild" is nothing to do with partying, chainsmoking drunken beautiful people. It's a group of Irish models, singers actors type people surviving in the remote rocky storm-tost coastline of Connemara!

Bhumibol Birthday: Royal Windows

THERE IS A DOCUMENTARY ON THE RADIO as I speak about blind people on a photography course. Radio 4 are running this in all seriousness. What next? Yodelling for the deaf?
I've been thinking about the Queen quite a lot as I've been staring out of my clear window (my new passtime). She was grumbling on Monday night about being tired. Frankly I'm not surprised! Heading the state aged 82!

And to those who say her Majesty does not "work" I'd say imagine the kind of situation e.g. a wedding. You really don't want to go but duty calls. And all day is spent drest up, on display, being photographed and camcordered at every turn and having to be gracious for hours on end to people you hardly know and might not like. All this running right through to the evening when, toadd insult to injury, something you'd particularly like to watch is on television. Assuming you're not roaring drunk when you return - how are you going to feel? Nothing if not utterly exhausted! Our poor Queen is on such best behaviour every day of the week!

Having said that, if I'd been somehow given a choice, pre-birth of a royal life or a normal life, I'd be the kind of fool to press the royal button!! Rollerskating round Buckingham Palace would be too much of a joy to turn down...

Did you know, every afternoon she's at "home" her Majesty is served tea at three o'clock sharp with her corgis at her feet. A little pot of tea is brought in for Ma'am, along with a multistorey silver cake stand loaded up and brimming with creamy dainties. In strict contravention of the Royal Vet's instructions, her Majesty feeds every one of these to the baying, squabbling, misbehaving eight-strong pack of hounds as they charge round the room trying to catch them in their elongated noses... Half an hour later the obsequious servants return to one empty teacup and a Persian rug now strewn with dog-hairs, cake crumbs and creamy paw prints. And straight-faced, her Majesty claims to have noshed the entire stack of creamies herself!

Because I would not put it past Evilstein to poke out my hamsters himself, I kept htem stahsed under deep cover until Tuesday evening. Out they pinged merrily in a furry jamboree when finally I undid the tartan clothes bag.... I could not help noticing they'd polished off all four handfuls of hammymix and birdseed I put out on Monday morning (and probably stashed it directly in their teabox) - they had done this so efficiently that not a stray seed remained on open display barely a day later. A couple of broccoli-sprigs were the only untidiness. I've made them a public toilet now and a toy and they actually use both. The latrine is an empty Parmesan tub with the biggest flap open. Ugh it smells, but if I washed it too well they'd forget what it's there for knowing them and start weeing in the toilet tubes again (which made Itchy really stink - I think being lowest pecking order she got the lavatorial end to sleep in ...)

The special toy is two toilet tubes fixed together with random holes cut all around on both. These are slotted into a Jaffa Cakes box with more holes cut into all six sides. Itchy especially loves diving in and peering out. She looks so funny with her tubby bum blocking up the hole, two pink and stubby legs akimbo as she vanishes inside....

I have just found out I may have that winter SAD thing. TK Kerouac posted a fairly clinical description of the condition (Monday 3 December post) and it was me down to a T. Especially when I found out it often manifests as exhaustion rather than straight "depression". Last night I was asleep by early evening, maybe 6pm. And slept on and off (but mostly on) all the way through till 2pm this afternoon... This may have something to do with London being on such a high latitude. Though we're hardly arctic circle, in deepest midwinter we do get barely more than seven and a half hours of very faint, watery daylight. That is miserably depressing... And each time I try to get more active and to do things I pay for it in even worse weariness afterwards. So I can't win!

Anyway, happy 80th birthday to King Bhumibol of Thailand, longest-serving monarch in the world!

Videos of the day:
King Bhumibol, Great King of Thailand
Boney M: Rivers of Babylon (!)

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Two blogs of people (they are a couple) who moved from Amsterdam to Adelaide recently:

Nicole http://nicolemobile.blogspot.com (she's already featured here)

Vincent http://vincentmobile.blogspot.com (brand new blog)
It's fascinating to see a new life spanning out before you...

Another expat blogger I know is Welshcakes Limoncello who blogs about her current life in Sicily http://sicilyscene.blogspot.com

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Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customes: a facsimile 1850s book courtesy of Nicole!

Window Refugee

YES I'M DEPORTED FROM MY ROOM WHILE a Jamaican and a Polish workman rip out my old windy window (felt like it was open on cold days even when was shut; that's how insulating it was!)... and I've removed everything from within five feet of said about-to-be-gaping-hole-in-wall! I'm hoping that by midafternoon it shall all be done and wondrous uPVC framed double glazed glass windows shall be mine... (I hope they are glass and not those dreadful plastic windows but beggars can't be choosers... ahem!)

Mother Hubbard told me it probably is happening as the result of a special council grant for a less carbon emissions house. Which perfectly makes sense. A sudden streak of generosity on Butterstein (the uber-evil uberlandlord)'s part does not...

I wish I hadn't gone quite so OTT yesterday saying I felt covered in diarrhoea in that restaurant. It sounds really ungrateful. I did have a nice time, but as I say really did feel out of place, especially in the beginning. I felt obligated to take my hat off for one thing... freeing still-damp recently shampoo'd hair. I felt wrong wrong wrong and would have gone to the loo to paranoidly stare into the mirror trying to fix it if that hadn't entailed having to walk past the maitre D who would intensely scrutinize me on my way back in .... ooer.

I never explained the significance of those two Queen of the Night arias I posted up... bit of a private joke. When I was in my teens we used to have the famously dreadful Florence Foster Jenkins version of that song on record. My brothers did not seem to realize the joke was the singer could not sing... Anyway when I did get to go to the opera many moons ago I selected The Magic flute to hear it properly sung. It's quite a famous song as it has the highest note (an F6) in all the standard repertoire of opera...

Well I must go as I'm hungry. My robos are stashed next to the sink, wrapped in a laundry bag and piled up with about 100 records on their roof to prevent nosey pokers poking them out. They pinged around all over the place when they realized something was up and they were moving. Highly entertaining beady-eyed furballs that they are. Even Yangyang came out when I dropped in birdseed and broccoli this morning. His eyes are enormous and poppy. Dark, inky hemispheres. And boy is he long! ... Like a furry freight train trundling out of his nest ... a furry eel more like ... or whatever.

I'll let you know how the windows turn out. Hopefully they don't fix them in with paper glue. O sorry I forgot it's not Evilstein and his personal dolts installing these but professional window guys. You get so used to hundredth best sometimes it's all you ever expect ...

New video of the Day:
Florence Foster Jenkins tribute (including her own famous hahahahahahahahahaargh bits of the Mozart aria) Queen of the Night!!

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Do you know beautyberries? Clickonthis and tell me whether you knew what they were before... or whether you merely thought they were just blackberries airbrushed to glamourize. Or fully Apple Macked!!!

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Nearly 2pm and ...
Man! Still windows not done!
I sneaked upstairs and found Laundretta reading a book whilst smoking a fag on her bed (only respectable thing SHE ever does on a bed... har-har... sorry I should not be vulgar...)... my room the ripping sound of tape....
I snuck downstairs and had a look of my window out the bathroom window and saw I have indeed got a luxury new bright white plastic frame!...
... unfortunately no glass in it just yet! How on earth they slide in the glass after the frame's fitted is quite beyond me ... but hey..!

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Man! I can't believe this. 3pm and windows still glassless. At least Matran and Laundretta's is too so I hope they're shivering. Man all I want to do is go home slam door have whacking great hit and fall asleep with face in chicken curry egg fly lice what's wrong with that and these dolty pompom plonkas are preventing me from crashing out I've been up since about midnight. (Was so exhausted from art gallery exploits I spent literally most of the weekend from then on sleeping. Been feeling very run down lately.) ... They'd better not be interfering with my hamsters either. Else I hope Bashful bites them. O come on man! It's cold! Even in this cybercaffe. And I just wanna go home. How long does it take to slide glass into a doubleglazing frame? There's nothing IN it yet so surely nothing's waiting to dry... come on come on come on!!

I'm too tired to deal with any of this. Just ventured up road. Saw Polish one puffing on fake Marlboro by front door. He had a desperate look on his face. What has gone wrong? This is not good ...

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While I wait I'm going to have a look at Japanorama from my Nippon blog ...

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Ten minutes to four.
Just walked up road. Irritatedly craned neck to Laundretta's window. Wow! Viridescence reflecting from the sky! Upon closer look it was indeed a PVCu window but not as bad as the worst I've seen (you know, windows so bowed out and warped they're like the window version of the fairground hall-of-freaky-mirrirs...
I crept upstairs as silently as Itchy when she's escaped... a workman was there. So I hid in the toilet and craned my neck out. Wow! A brand new teletubby window was in place of my drafty old one. It looks so tiny and small and cute! Then one of the men started coming downstairs so I bolted out the front door.
Q: Are you a man or a mouse?
A: A hamster!
Not in the mood for making bright workman chat today, know what I mean. Anyway I'm sure Laundretta's "accidentally" falling open dressing gown's kept them more than "amused"...

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6:20pm I wasn't in too much of a good mood earlier. Very tired. I've been sleeping excessively; exhausted excessively. Don't know quite why ...

Anyway a while after four I went back to the house and spoke to the Polish fitter: "have you finished?" I said. "O yeah; have a look." I did and it's wonderful. NOT PVCu - I take that back! These are real glass and I get such a good view. (Probably the old view was so bad because those old windows were so exceedingly dirty!!) I did eat chicken curry egg fried rice. Sat in the shop looking up "chicken" and "curry" and "egg" and "fry/fried" and "rice" in my Japanese dictionary. Some fantastic characters came up. Egg was particularly entertaining - 卵 - because you can see two ovular things in it ... you need an overactive imagination for Chinese-derived characters but you get to learn the little motifs that make them up! An oblong, for example, represents a mouth (口) and so appears in language (言語), talk (を話す), word (単語), shouting (を叫ぶ) etc ... (in shouting the mouth goes sideways: 叫, see). What an entertaining language the Japanese have.

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10:21pm and I've just had a massive fix!... of Her Majesty the Queen!! In the latest instalment of the BBC1 docu Monarchy: The Royal Family At Work... (Same programme I was ranting on about this time last week although it was a disappointing half hour shorter this week...) Buckingham Palace looks lovely from the inside... like a particularly plush hotel. Though I'd have to say if I lived there I wouldn't go running around those long corridors like everybody else. I'd go about on scooters or rollerskates. Ma'am seemed particularly irritable at times this week. Perhaps the BBC consider it more fittingly "modern" to have an exasperated Queen with a bit of attitude. Maybe she was really getting rather miffed at having all those cameras following her about every day for nearly a year!

I'm still enchanted by my marvellous new window. I've been gazing out of it and opening and closing it. It even has a lock with a key. How posh is that. I bet Her Majesty the Queen doesn't have double glazing at Buck House!

In a minute I have to go out and disinterr my robos (poor man's corgis (the Queen's favourite dogs)) - they do have a couple of things in common with corgis 1. they're all very mischievious and 2. all being a light sandy colour with identical markings they're exactly the "same" in appearance. I can only tell the three apart by degrees of tubbiness. And Spherical might have a slightly lighter coat than Bashful... They're hidden behind a chest of drawers, layers of bedsheets, and a tartan washing bag under a stack of 100 oldfashioned huge vinyl records!

Well I had better say goodnight now.

***{And I'm giving a little royal wave...}***

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PS:
The BBC World Service have been doing a radioplaywriting competition for people from all over the world, open to all ... they've been playing the six or ten best ones ... anyway a play came on the other night ... I was asleep when it first came on so it kind of melded into my dreams at first, then I came to clear consciousness and realized how fantastically good this piece of drama really was. Surely a new talent of world standing had been discovered. They'd even persuaded Clive Swift (best known as Hyacinth Bucket's longsuffering husband in Keeping Up Appearances) and Prunella Scales (best known as Basil Fawlty's longsuffering/tormenting wife in Fawlty Towers but likely seen nowadays playing posh old widows in Jane Austenny costume drama... to take starring roles. Something I'm sure they'd not have done for any old bit of tripe ...
Well anyway, turns out the play is called The Rocking Horse and it's NOT by some young struggling playwrite but by Arnold Wesker who's 75 and along with Harrold Pinter a leading light of modern British drama. And it's brand new and was specially written for radio. If you're lacking some entertainment do clickonit and you can play it through the computer. I guarantee you won't be disappointed.

***

Great pictures from Slavonic Central Europe!
http://trunko.blogspot.com

Tate Gallery Lightflickery Exhibit Things...

"HUMAN FLESH IS REALLY SWEET," said the Brazillian tillgirl to the Turkish one (in plain English at my local cornershop, which is such a novelty for round here - believe!) I said: "ugh! human flesh is supposed to taste like pork" - which put the Turkish girl off (not halal, darling) though the Brazilian was licking her lips!!

... such is the bizarre talk at my local shop...

I did see my Mummy yesterday!

Tutankhamun will have to wait till the new year. It is totally booked out. Instead we went to the Tate Britain gallery on Millbank (the one with the Victorian paintings, not the Tate Modern. That is the one with the famous crack in the floor...)

We had a 2-hour dinner in a really posh restaurant. I felt really out of place. Imagine if someone spread diarrhoea on your face and transformed your hair into old flannels. Then gave you a few distinctly visible boils for good measure. Well that's about how comfortable I felt in there. It was the sort of place where meat isn't covered in gravy but a sticky sauce that somehow rolls to geometrical limits on the plate... even the carrots were sticky (but no black bits like the carrots I buy!) The Brussels sprouts had roasted conkers in them (chestnuts if you want to be posh). To be honest I thought they were fried up walnuts but what do I know..?

We went round 2 exhibitions and never once round the main gallery.

Exhibition one was called "Turner Prize - blah years of the bull**** prize and runners up."

(The Turner Prize has nothing at all to do with the great myopic painter Turner except that it is named after him. It is a current prize, awarded every year (usually on Channel 4) since the early 80s...)

Literally nothing impressed us in all innumerable rooms of this.

E.g. a 2x1 metre nugget shaped pan of iron with evaporated seasalt or something on top. Not good.

A man bending over with bum on display at various angles. (About 4 of him.) He was made of iron. I only marvelled that they managed to attach him 20 ft high without bringing the roof down..

A room with a light coming on and off at about 3 degrees of illumination. I vaguely remembered this one from bbc2 circa 2000. The gallery called it "robust". I pointed out to my Mum it was like her flickery old kitchen light when I used to come visiting alternate weekends aged 12. This caused her to laugh her head off - right within the sterility of the gallery! (My interpretation.)

Damien Hurst's formaldehyde cows were in there.

These were the highpoint of the exhibition.

Not just because they're pickled cows.

But because they're in two tanks with a humanly-spaced walkthrough. Then the cow is sheared in half (2 cows, adult for adults and baby for young children)... you can see the spine, guts, kidneys, everything.

I profoundly disagree that this is "not art". It was beautiful. The art of God Almighty. And really fascinating. Far more so than the warped bits of iron on the floors and coloured dots that decorated the rest of this exhibition!

At many points we honestly couldn't tell what was e.g. a pile of leaflets of a "work of art"...

To be quite frank everybody I eyed got tired of this.

Then we went into the David Hockney Turner exhibition. What Hockney the acid-bright oilpainter had to do with Turner the misty watercolourist I have no idea. Except his quotes all over the high walls. My Mum's husband Brian said about 4 times that one particular Turner (one of smugglers rowing to shore off Folkestone coast) meant more to him than the entire bull****ting Turner Prize exhibition!

And outside to cigarettes (for me) and the MI6 building (Britain's counterintelligence bombproof network nervecentre thing) why on EARTH they chose such an ostentatious building for such a cruical part of our intelligence gathering "network" I shall never know.

What I will note was the million pound loking yuppie flats right opposite in repetitious style and colouring (click the above MI6 link to get an idea.) Christmas trees and HD widescreen tellies glinted through the multimillion pound glass making me feel even colder and more streetbound than I actually was...

Itchy escaped 2 nights ago! And to cut a story short I found her within the hour rambling under my giant electric fan. Flashing white belly as she went... Then I threw various towels and teatowels at her yet she still managed to elude them. Then I happened to glance in the robotank (which was just round the corner) only to see a pigchain of three robos gliding into the biggest night tube... I slightly impatiently tipped these out to see that - yes! - miraculously all three hamsters were back home. HOW ON EARTH Itchy who is 2" long max managed to jump a 10" high glass wall I shall never figure out... but that's what seemed to happen..!

Also I cleaned them out thoroughly today. As Evilstein's threatening to henchman round tomorrow morning...

(old *******).

Right I gotta go now...

... and how was YOUR weekend?

*

Videos of the Day
Queen of the Night Aria:
Boy Treble Version
Elena Mosuc Female Coloratura Soprano Version...

***

Amazing Malaysian Thumb-Mountain Trek!
http://guynextdoor84.blogspot.com

Great Spanish-speaking travels... I'd love to go rambling in a campervan like that..!
http://brujulavic.blogspot.com

Amazing Pink Floyd The Wall -like Art Things
http://underwatterlove.blogspot.com

Rebecca Art Dog Blog
These modern art cats are Warholesque... also remind me of the Gilbert and George who took up by far the best wall of the modernest art in the Tate exhibition yesterday..!
http://underwatterlove.blogspot.com

Frictional Friday: Or - Why I'm Not Throwing My Record Collection Out

THE FRICTION IS ALL in my head. I have to make things plain for Monday when Evilstein the landlord has vowed to send in henchmen to rip out my window and replace with double glazing. Which is fine. But why wait till the cusp of December to do it?

Mother Hubbard gave me some records - maybe 80 or 100 discs - from her housemate to sell a couple of months ago. She said I could keep the money. Which was very generous of her, I thought. They are mostly ex-library copies of classical music so they're all plasticked up and covered in stickers, barcodes, stamps and lengths of tape. So I doubt I would get much more than 50p each for them if I did try and sell them...

They're stuff like "Emmanuel Chabrier: Piano Music (complete). Rena Kyriakou, Piano," - Camden Libraries. And "Ghena Dimitrova - Puccini Arias" - including O Mio Babbio Caro - Holborn Library.

I do not want to sell them as I've always wanted a classical music collection. And vinyl (especially from an old analogue master) can actually sound warmer, better than CD. I don't see why I should chuck these just because I've no turntable at present and Evilstein will think they're "clutter".

Even my Tubular Bells (it's all vinyl), I was told might only make £3 on Ebay. Though the person telling had a vested interest in keeping my expectations low as he deals in music...

No I want to keep this collection. One thing I always wanted to do on getting clean (if I ever manage it) would be to learn aout classical music. Like most people I know loads of tunes from television adverts and films but hardly know what any are actually called. Or who they're by!

I think Katherine Jenkins, who's only in her early 20s, has a fantastically rich, mature voice. Partly this is bc she's a mezzo and so has a mellower, deeper range anyhow. It's a shame for her that most of the best repertoire was written for the more prized (yet so very often simply shriller) soprano voice. Miss Jenkins says she actually smashed glass once by hitting a top A, a story she repeats on the Ready Steady Cook Ave Maria clip that's still in my sidebar.

Maybe some modern composer will be inspired by Miss Jenkins's unique talent and write some new arias specially for her. Surely the era of modern "serious" music having to consist of discordant orchestras' tortured wailings - like hearing tuning up on a bad LSD trip - has now passed. And finally we can have great tunes back again. Like in the eras of Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms... So what if we live in an age of nuclear threats, terrorism and climactic destruction? Doesn't mean the music has to be ugly too!

Well no big news of anything today. I'm getting ready to see my Mum tomorrow.

No more roboscandal. I thought Itchy had escaped again last night. But it was just me nightmaring...

I'm off now to do some of my memoirs. I have to wrok out where this book is going (not that I don't obviously know my own lifestory. I have to plan it out a little now. All I was doing thus far was simply scribbling off the top of my head!)

Have a cheery weekend everyone!

PS Isn't that Sushibar Clip classic~?!?

Today's Vid:
Katherine Jenkins: I Vow to Thee My Country

My New Japanese Blog; Windy Experiences; Diarrhoea Stopped; Itchy Exhausted

BABY ITCHY is so exhausted after "partying" with those wild mice behind the cupboard for 24 hours. No wonder such a lot of squaking occurred. Quite probably it was poor Itchy being terrorized by those squealy worm-tailed long-lost cousins...

At least now when I say "Come out you pink noses! Come out you tubby gremlins" three twitching sets of whiskers appear. It was mighty depressing with just two.

Baby was so exhausted last night that when I lent over and said hello hello she stuck her head out of the teabox only to fall right back to sleep. She looked so amusing dozing away like that.

I have a new Japanese blog!
グレドヲードの日本のブログ
"Guredowodo-no Nihon-no burogu"
Yes my name in Japanese is "Guredowodo"!
They have a certain way of pronouncing syllables quite unlike western speach. There are no consonant clusters. So that a Japanese person saying "string" would say something more like "suturingu". Four syllables to them, but to our ears so rapidly elided together it's not rendered as clumpily as first sight might suggest. Did you notice that "blog" turns into "burogu"~?!?
It's at http://gledwoodnihon.blogspot.com ... "Nihon" means "Nippon" by the way. An expression I'm sure more westerners are familiar with (though over here, for some reason it's a make of highly effective ant- and cocroach-killing powder! With the Japanese colours all over the bottle!!)

Really I put this new blog there to improve my own Japanese but it's open to all. It's Youtube screens, like all my other blogs, but will by no means consist of only language lessons. Anything Japanese (like documentaries) go there too.

If you watch Let's Learn Japanese: Basic 1 Part A (Mishaps at the Airport) as posted up tonight I wonder if you'll marvel like me how, during the series of mishaps at Tokyo International Airport the other man didn't pick a fight when trolleys clashed. And that the young woman picking up the camcorder said "is this yours?" rather than making off with it quick-style in modern British fashion!

The Japanese are so polite. All that bowing? Do you think they get bad backs? Did you know several people are killed each year on the Tokyo metro from bowing on the edge of platforms as trains come rushing in ...

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was on horseback in Windsor Great Park with the then King of Arabia when her horse thunderously "passed gas" as they say in America. "Oh I do beg your pardon!" exclaimed the Queen. "That is quite all right your majesty," replied the King, not realizing quite who had in fact let rip. "It happens to us all on some occasion!"

Did you hear about the story from the reign of Elizabeth I when one of her nobles, (the 17th Earl of Oxford), obsequiously bowing lost control of his bowels and quacked out a resounding emission of wind right before the royal throne? So mortified was he that he fled for some years to France only to return when he was sure the embarrassing consequences of his gaseous outburst had died down. And dear Queen Elizabeth, ever the wit; the first thing she said was, "It's all right. We've all forgotten the fart"!

Well my own injurious bad health is in recovery enough that I'm risking my own cooking yet again. If I'm dead by the morrow someone else will have to post for me....

... and then I'll never finish those lumpen memoirs. Or learn Japanese!


Videos of the Day:
Sushibar Conveyorbelt Scenes
Tokyo Airport Mishaps

Baby Itchy Reprimanded!

痒いハムスターの赤ちゃんを捕まえてきた！

I'VE CAUGHT THE LITTLE SWINE!

Baby Itchy Roborovski is in protective custody and has been severely told off.

She rambles about noncholantly as if nothing happened...

... all the possible eventualities I had to eventually sit down and consider right through. Thankfully the old pipes hole under the sink has been stopped up by my landlord's workmen in an antimouse move. So I relaxed a bit about her having left the room. The door is a flush-fitting full-on firedoor so no way could she have squeezed under there. The only remaining possibility (considering I had only caught site of her once, about an hour after she first went missing last night) was that she had got down somewhere she could not get back up. Somewhere in my room. There are books piled up besides the cupboard that's crawling alive with wild mice and that's where she was. Cavorting with wild mice if you please! Soon as I pulled the books out I spotted something and saw Itchy was alive! I was seriously starting do doubt this as (well, as I said) utterly no sign of her.

It was over an hour from first sighting tonight and several near-misses to eventual recapture. You must understand you cannot grab at a tiny animal like that - she's no longer than my little finger. (And, incidentally, being the skinniest robo, the one who could least affort to be away from home and food.) I baited a long cardboard tube with birdseed and broccoli, which necessitated sitting right by it else I'd have to move and/or lunge which would panick her out of there. I put another normal-size toilet tube round the side of the books. And totally blocked off the cupboard so she could not get behind or underneath it.... let her ramble towards it. Inside she went. Two seconds later - CAPTURED!

NAUGHTY NAUGHTY LITTLE SWINE!!

***

And my trots seems to have gone away, too!

***

My own haiku of the day:
Baby Itchy -
naughty swine.
Nibbles seeds oblivious.

赤ちゃん痒い-
いたずらな豚です。
かじる種子気づかれます。

(translation courtesy Google translate - and I know the syllables don't go 5-7-5...)

***

PS Couldn't resist passing the Japanese back through Babelfish and got this even more poetic rendition:

The baby it is itchy,
- it is the mischievous pig.
The seed which you gnaw you become aware.

*!!*

***

Extra video of the day I found this last night but wasn't sure how to embedd it.
It's Japanese Sushibar Conveyorbelt Scenes ...

***

STOP PRESS:
I'm opening a new Japanese blog. Full of Japanese things. With language lessons for me and anyone else who wants to learn some Japanese...

http://gledwoodnihon.blogspot.com

Still No Baby Itchy

重度の下痢！そして私のハムスターを再表示されていない！

Still no sign of the missing Itchy. I've no idea where she might have gone... if she's been kidnapped and sold into slavery by the wild mice behind my wardrobe or what... I am most concerned. But I refuse to give up hope.

I was really ill this morning. Severe diarrhoea so bad it left almost no mark in the loo because it was so exceedingly watery. And gut cramps. And vomiting. I sicked up my methadone as well. Then, as I nearly always do when I'm ill like that, I fell asleep all afternoon only getting up just in time to go to the drugs clinic where I gave a zero reading on the breathalyser. Ha-ha! So there!!

Nobody can tell what caused me to get sick like that (I was far too ill to leave the house in the morning plus exhausted from vomiting...) It cannot have been my stew as that's constantly boiling with the lid on and hence just about as sterile as cooked food can get. The only other thing I'd eaten in the previous several days was some pasta and broccoli with grated cheddar and parmesan. But that was cooked in the same pan I'd used the day before to sterilize all my old cutlery. Boiling and boiling and topping up and boiling again for over an hour. So how that could have given me food poisoning I've no idea. It's a mystery...

Did anyone in this country see the Queen documentary on Monday? It's one of a five-parter. I don't think it's been shown anywhere abroad yet though I'd have thought most civilized countries love watching that sort of thing. In Germany, for example, she's known simply as "die Queen" or even "the Queen" - and everyone knows which Queen they're talking about!

The cameras followed last year's State Visit to the United States of America. Mrs Bush was well enamoured with the British style of State Banquets and remarked how small and plain and pokey the White House is compared to Buckingham Palace. And quite right, too. Nothing but the best for Ma'am!

I don't want one of those bicycle-riding monarchs like they have in Northern Europe. It's only due to the shillyshallying farts in power at the time that Ma'am didn't get a replacement for the decommissioned Royal Yacht Britannia. The people would object to our spending one hundred million pounds on a royal boat, I can hear them blustering. And yet they pour billions into the Iraq war and other utter white elephants. I for one do not want a rowing boat Queen. When I'm Prime Minister I'm getting her a proper boat. Plus ten-storey high turrets on all four corners and a huge extension to the back of Buckingham Palace to mark my time in office! (Why should everything marking "Great" Britain always be from the past? Why no additions from today?? If the Houses of Parliament had been built in "Modern Britain" they'd resemble a multistorey carpark! Do click for the image!)

Here's today's message to Japan!
My today's message to Japan:
ここに私が日本のファンにメッセージを私します。最初に、お聞きしたい、自分のブログをどうやって見つけますか？今ではそれが本当に汚れを入浴後にする必要があります。その場合、私はもっときれいにしようとする！ぜひご自分のすべての日本の俳句を楽しんだ。かれらは、オンラインで私が見つかりましたのでよく分かりませんブログを書いている。最良の健康をお祈りします。私のブログを読んで続行してください！愛を込めてから Gledwood

Now I'm going to go home and pine for poor Baby Itchy. Hopefully she has not disappeared down a hole to get lost under the floorboards. O I don't know what to say...

My videos of the Day:
1. Hayley Westenra/Katherine Jenkins: Ave Maria Ready Steady Cook duet. I think Katherine Jenkins in particular has an amazing voice&
2. Hayley Westenra: O Mio Babbino Caro
3. Katherine Jenkins: My Heart Will Go On

And last but not least, today's haiku:

かんこ鳥鳴や蟇どのの弔いに

kankodori naku ya hiki dono no tomurai ni

the mountain cuckoo sings
at Mr. Toad’s
funeral

***

9:52pm NO SIGN YET OF POOR MISSING ITCHY (boo-hoo)

***

I've revised my opinions of my ideal home from Buckingham Palace (rather pokey by international standards) to the Winter Palace at St Petersburg - what a house! Imagine how much room Baby Itchy would have to ping about in there...!!

***

See this Amazing Country Cottage Slideshow of Snowy Conifers from Canada...

They have baby Xmas trees for £5 each in pots at our local supermarket. Made me long so much for a garden in which to plant one...

***

PS I hope the Japanese isn't too annoying to most people. It's meant to attract over more visitors from Japan. So if you're Japanese come ON!!

Itchy AWOL!

私のハムスターは、エスケープ！

BABY ITCHY ROBOROVSKI has escaped! She is officially AWOL. I waited so long for her to reappear from wherever she's in hiding I fell asleep earlier and, waking to no radio (so any suspicious scrabblings I hear) had no idea of the time and felt it was about 4am. Imagine my surprise when my mobile phone proclaimed midnight no less!

I hope she does turn up. I don't know what I would do without scrambled wet fur sticking up everywhere appearance pinging in the morning...

In my absence I've turned out all lights but my dedicated Rodent Light TM (fireglow bulb: pitch darkness to hamsters) and have taped a succession of tubes to the top of their tank, like a builders' rubbish chute where Itchy can clamber in and like the smell of home to much she flings herself in over the top. Well that's the idea...

... and if I don't check it the minute I get back it's just my luck I'll spend all night cooing "come out you pink nose. Come out you gremlin, you swine!" into every corner so Laundretta thinks I'm now schizophrenic only to find she's been earwashing back home in her nest all night!

Actually you can't really coo to bring them back. Once escaped they go into "wild" mode and ping about everywhere pretending to be scared of you.

Righty-ho so that's the news. I have to go and get some tempting broccoli from the corner shop.

Ta-taa folks! I will hopefully log on with news of her safe return tomorrow a.m.

Video of the Day1:
Run-off-feet Robomother
Struggling to keep her litter in one place...

Video of the Day2:
King Cobra
Why is it always an Aussie tormenting these poor magnificent creatures?

***

Re yesterday's haiku; I found them online. I wish I did have that command of Japanese to write them myself!

I figured out the mouse licking the river.

.春風や鼠のなめる角田川
haru kaze ya nezumi no nameru sumida-gawa

spring breeze–
a mouse licking up
Sumida River

It means the ripples are so feathery they're as if those of a tiny mouse tenderly lapping the water...

Unwittingly Middle Eastern Hotpot Haiku

EVILSTEIN CAME KNOCKING like the Grim Reaper - Military tent inspection time. "Nothing on the side! Nothing here. No bits -" (He means no clutter.) "Or you are out. LAST CHANCE!!" He grundled in that voice that has all the mellifluousness of a decomissioned diesel locomotive spluttering to life on a rusty East London siding on a mizzling winter's dawn ...

Well he can ****off. There's no law against clutter.

Mother Hubbard says I should tell him where to go.

I say "forwarned is forarmed" and I should say nothing. If and when he does try something on I will take action. But why tell him or even hint at it first? He will only get indignant and likely come up with some even evilsteinier plot thickener against me...

My Middle-Eastern hotpot (for that's pretty much what I've found out it is) is perfected better than ever this time.

In an ordinary-sized slo-cooker 4 chunks neck of lamb (£2.65 worth at £1.49 per lb...) so that's about 1.7lbs or about 800g I expect.... Plus 3 medium potatoes sliced small. One large red onion. 3 fairly large carrots, sliced thin & cut in half at the fat end. About 8 large button mushrooms (ie unopened field mushrooms) each cut in 6. One tin crabeye beans.

And the seasoning: 2 desert spoons paprika. 1 desert spoon Mr Brown's Jamaican curry powder (click to see the packet!). 1 flat teaspoon ginger. 1 nonheaped teaspoon (dry) thyme (use far less if adding fresh herbs they're that much stronger..! 35 drops Maggi liquid seasoning. 4 desert spoons dark soy sauce. 1 desert spoon beef gravy granules (eg Bisto). About 2-3 pinches or a fifth of a flat teaspoon chili powder.

This time I have neared perfection.

(Last time's cucumber, by the way, was only to use up leftovers. I don't advocate cucumber stew, I was just pointing out you can use it if it's going to waste...)

Today's result is spicy but - despite the curry - not Indian or Jamaican. Certainly not Mexican in style. Closest to Middle Eastern - like a hotpot I had in Morocco once. Lovely business!

Mother Hubbard was aghast at the concept of "learning" to cook stew. "How can you 'learn' to make stew?" she exclaimed. "That's the easiest thing in the world to make you just chop up..." and launched into her own method.... Till I pointed out that my "learning" was my gradual perfection of the "dish"... (isn't it a bowlful~??) Regular readers will know my "slightly" obsessive cooking/drugtaking/hamsterizing streak...

Mother Hubbs insisted that casserole/stew must but must be made with "stock". Most usually industrial-style Knorr or similar cubes. And that my paprika-on-dark-soy-sauce "base" doesn't count. Her method results in a relatively blandish British style leek-and-potato Irish stew. Mine is far spicier. (You could dip a pen in mine & write the recipe in browny-red scrawls it's that spicy...) So I realized I've unwittingly perfected soemthing a little more exotic than your average English style hotpot. Mine is far superior if I can say so myself!

My poor robbies! Becaus I knew old diesel-tanker Evilstein would be barging in chuddering in belching his fumes out like an extra from Thomas the Tank Engine (click to view a realistic depiction of Evilstein's face) I knew I had to stash them well and truly. And so slotted between wall and a chest of drawers, they lay piled over with vinyl records and unwashed clothes plus the suitcases that were under my window (the doubleglazing man needs access there so all that had to move...)

They were rambling like mad all three at a time on their buttery wheel last time I checked. Always the same formation: pingy Baby Itchy leading the way up front. Bashful as "back marker" as racing commentators tend to call horses I've bet money on. And gargantuan Big Tubby Momma Spherical weighing things down in the middle!

This morning I was just rearranging their lavvy tubes when I felt hammy-fangs sinking right into the tip of my right index finger! This happened in slow motion and I yowled in shock before naughty Bashful (for it is always her who bites me like that - the swine!) turned on her bum and bumbled off. Then to emerge bashfully from a lavatory tube a brief interval later, batting her eyelashes at me. A picture of pure innocence... When I put on a roborovski production of Othello I'm having Bashful play Iago...

Now here are my Japanese haiku of the day:
(Haiku being short Japanese poems by Authors like Basho... the English translations here aren't the best but these were all I could find in original plus translation...)

.春風や鼠のなめる角田川
haru kaze ya nezumi no nameru sumida-gawa

spring breeze–
a mouse licking up
Sumida River

.御盛りや草の庵ももりはじめ
osaga[ri] ya kusa no iori mo mori hajime

the year’s first rain–
my grass roof’s
first leak

.春雨や喰れ残りの鴨が鳴
harusame ya kuware-nokori no kamo ga naku

spring rain–
the uneaten ducks
are quacking

.俳諧を囀るやうなかんこ鳥
haikai wo saezuru yôna kankodori

like warbling pure haiku
mountain
cuckoo

Good luck to all in Australia with your new government. Faster broadband is on the way. (Incidentally we're promised 50 mega-somethings per sec country-wide (but only in towns big enough to be cable TV'd up) by Virgin Cable next year... Plus your new Premier speaks Chinese. I heard that speech where he totally upstaged Mr Howard!... All good for regional relations from now on ..!

Cheerio everyone and Happy Stewing! I'm off to get flour & vegetarian "suet" for intellectual dumplings...

*

Videos of the Day
Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson: Say Say Say
Barbra Streisand: The Way We Were

*

Calling all UK-dwelling Brits: Her Majesty the Queen is on (that famous Annie Liebowitz portrait strop docu) 8:30 tonite on BBC1... not to be missed for the world!

***

Spectacular Equadorian countryside shots:
http://sedacasinecuador.blogspot.com

Anna Braga Hennebry. Blog from a Brazilian lady in South Dakota travelling the USA
http://anabragahenebrysjournal.blogspot.com

Amicituoi - striking pictures from Italy. But he seems to be calling Camilla Parker Bowles a tart!
http://amicituoi.blogspot.com

Did everyone see under the waters of a mysterious French lake?
http://waterproof68.blogspot.com

Furry Boiled Egg ...

POOR OLD BABY ITCHY has been "furry boiled egging" galore. Rambling through her ultra narrow magic wand tube. You blow through the front. She panicks inside and scoots out quick in reverse, thereby pushing up all her fur, in "boiled egg with eyes" fashion. Poor Baby Itchy.

My stew came out all the more wonderful for its lack of nonEuropean ingredients. Okra, I've really discovered, just denigrates into a seed-filled slop at the bottom. Nasty business. Why they sell it as "suitable for stews and casseroles" in Sainsbury's I'll never know...

I did add (not in place of courgettes/zucchini but because it was languishing in my fridge and would only have gone off) a cucumber. It actually went very well in the soup. Like the onions, it just turns into background "thickener" and only little bits of peel were left over. It was still rather pleasant though.

I followed Ruth's advice and preboiled my potatoes first (they're always sliced small so the size wasn't stopping them from cooking).... Also I had no option but to do dumplings made iwth marge and not Atora. But they still came out pretty good.

And here's my message to my Japanese fans:

良い一日をすべての日本のファンのブログにします。なぜこんなに多くの人が東京から他の地域とここで私を介してきたさまよえるまるで見当がつかないが、楽しんで読んでくれるといいけど私のハムスターやヘロイン"印" ！

Now Debs has tagged me for "7 bizarre things of myself". I'm sure this is a turnaround of the 5- and 6 weird things tags that have been doing the rounds all this year. As I myself did the five weird things about six months ago!

Well anyway here we go:

1. I've been on heroin for 7 years now.

2. The 1st drug I ever took was caffeine in a cup of tea. Cannabis aside: I am living proof that supping tea (especially with sugar!) can and does lead to heroin addiction so all you tea-drinkers BE WARNED!!

3. Part of the long, long process of my addiction involved finding a mysteriously lost or flung out stash of 10g of heroin on the street! (That was about 7 and a half years ago.)

4. When I was 8 years old I once sneaked downstairs in the dead of night in rising panick as an evil burglar vehemently chiselled away at our front door!

It wasn't a burglar at all. Just my bored first hamster (imaginatively named "Hammy") vigorously gnawing at the bars because he was bored out of his head and we didn't realize hamsters need exercise wheels to stop them going stir-crazy!

5. I think the pop singer with the best voice is Barbra Streisand. But some of the material she's chosen to sing is execrable!

6. I have longed to speak (and read and write) Japanese since I was 16 or younger. And yet nearly 20 years later I have still not learned the language that far beyond "konichi-wa"! (My stately Japanese messages have to come courtesy of Google Translate, I'm afraid.)

7. I have never really wanted to be anything in this life but a writer. Hence those painful memoirs!

And I had a horrible nightmare last night about being trapped on a haunted damp-&-derelict runaway train full of baggage thieves. Nasty business!

And I tag:

Merle
Evil Spock
Jim D
Ivy
Bimbimbie
Molson
Vi Vi Voom
Nicole
Puss-in-Boots
Jeanette
Welshcakes Limoncello
Liz
Audrey
Akelamalu
M-filer
Wat
Marty ...
(ooer ~ this is turning into such a comprehensive list I'm starting to quiver and quake lest I leave someone out. I'm expert at doing things like that. So basically I tag everyone ~ har har har!!

Video of the Day:
Ebony Funky Dancer

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Wonderful pike etc photos from bottom of a French lake...
http://waterproof68.blogspot.com

Amazing Canadian Sketches
http://sixforfive.blogspot.com

What's New? Freezing Cold. More Stew.

DULL DULL DULL... DING-DONG THE DULLARD'S GONE! So depressed yesterday I was lying on the floor dreading the day. Lying there for hours sleeping and sleeping again. Nasty business. Till finally I got up and resumed the world and nothing was as bad as I'd feared it was going to be ... (what a surprise).

I've had loads of hits from Japan! In fact 19% of yesterday's traffic was from there. Can any Japanese person explain why? What did I do? Except get Google Translate to do a highly cogent comment for me for a Japanese blog I found on Blogger Play!

Sorry I didn't write anything yesterday due to dullarly depression and also running out of time and being too stingy with topup money till today...

I've not been doing very much at all of any interest to anyone. Except I'm making yet another stew. I've left out the posh ingredients this time (the tin of chopped tomatoes base, the courgette/zucchini and the okra) and am stewing up what's left. Along with a tin of intellectual red kidney beans. So let's see how that goes.

(Loads of yummy neck of stewing lamb's in there too. Of course!)

So Labour won the Australian elections. After 17 years of Mr Howard's (was that his name) "democratic" party monopoly. Reactions please from Down Under. You know how I love loathesome politicians!!

Baby Itchy Robo went for a ping in the early hours of this morning. When I wasn't too freezing cold to move from under my tent of a blanketry. Yes! Nighttime temperatures in London have been little over zero. Most inconvenient.

Now I have to go for now and sort my furry boiled eggs out. Etc.

One last thought. When I make Baby Itchy a star of the hip-hop and rap world, what name should I give her? Was thinking: "Furry Fur".. ... .... ;->... ..??

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PS I'm not seeing those mysterious Treasures of Tutankhamun till next week, but shall report back from there...

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Intellectual sketching instructions:
http://swankscum.blogspot.com

Blogging Xmas comes earlier every year. Here it is already at:
http://psychostampart.blogspot.com

Excellent Malaysia Pictures:
http://stevenhavingfun.blogspot.com

Ultra-floaty desertification Dead Sea photos:
http://heimatoderexil.blogspot.com

Really entertaining doggie pixx:
http://cosmicblast.blogspot.com

Fishing in Singapore:
http://nafishnafish.blogspot.com

More drawing instructions:
http://blogagago.blogspot.com

Great surf-n-sea shots:
http://moniksurf.blogspot.com

Mothball Dumplings "Casserole" Butterywheeled Robo

I WROTE SO MUCH RUBBISH EARLIER on notepaper I think it will have to wait to be posted as I'll run out of "air" time before I ever get it down...

I'm making another stew and it's just started going through the mental phase when it's really bubbling up. I don't know why but the potatoes always take about two hours to do in that slow cooker. They can be quite hard while the lamb is edible (if not "well" done... Maybe it's because I "seal in" the lamb by frying pretty well first...

Evilstein my landlord blustered in this morning threatening eviction (yet again) because they need to install double glazing and he thinks I have too much clutter. Since when has clutter-collecting been illegal? If he dares try anything I shall get the law on him good and proper.

My hamsters are celebrating their stay of execution by pinging three-at-a-time on their wheel. I can just glimpse them flashing whitebellied by as they ramble their way round. All hamsters do the same thing. On dismounting the wheel they run a circuit of the cage as if to prove they "got" somewhere with all that previous running... quite odd...

My memoirs are turning into a right ashtray of a book. Missing "vignettes"... stuff in wrong order. A right literary pigsty.

I can't wait till I've finished this nasty first draft or draught (one is a chilly wind from under a door. Another is a pouring of ale. Yet another is a writer's early edition of a literary work. Does anyone know which is which?). Then I can put all my boo-booze right. I'm not into the "perfecting it as you go along" school of book composing. That is a way of writing yourself into a corner as far as I'm concerned. Far better to get the archetecture right first time and perfect your decorations later. So to speak.

Valium Marilyn's just given me some Aero Chocolate Mousse. (Oo! This is one advantage of living in the motherland of confectionary you get double the ranges plus fridge and freezer based spinoffs unavailable in LA ~ haha!)

She was pretty with it tonight. Less Valium = more Marilyn. Simple equation!!

Now my robbies have a newly buttered wheel and yet they won't run on it. Because when I opened their enclosure to butter said wheel they all vanished down their selection of seven lavatory tubes and are now washing their ears and making Baby Itchy probably look like a harvest mouse fresh from a dunking in the bath...

Well my stew ~ or "casserole", if you will ~ must surely be about ready and I have to add "genuine 30 year old dumplings" (I hope they're not talking literally else they'll be more like mothballs). I have to go now.

Me and my Mum are going round the Millennium Dome to poke round Tutankhamun's Death Collection of memorabilia... I'll tell you how it was once I've been ...

Liz I found out about digital switchover for you. It should commence in 2008/9. Wales is one of the very first places. This link shows the details. People from other parts of the UK clickonit then choose your region from the menu. Freeview equipment will be the ONLY type of terrestrial TV (ie through the aerial) that will still work. But if you get Sky Digital or cable you'll still get service through that. Spare 5-channel tellies will not work in your house without freeview boxes though....

Video of the Day
All Saints: Black Coffee

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Aussie in New York... the city-by-night photo is pure diamond!

American (new) buildings are so much funkier than British ones... look at this from Boston, MA ...

Melancholic Monkey Delight Dumplings

SO TIRED AND SLOW AND WEARILY MELANCHOLIC. Deep in the middle of the night, close to 4am. I'm too too weary and not hungry. So I've just turned my slo-stew off. I made an intellectual stew earlier. Splintered neck of lamb. Very well done. Very nice. And I'm very proud of it.

I'm very depressed too. I don't know whether my memoir-writing caused this atack of "low mood" as my drs used to call it. Telling my story, as I've said. It's not only that I feel my life history has denigrated to a form of currency almost; but I have to desensitize myself to it anyhow if I'm to stand up and say "this is the book of my life so far and how I messed it up" - it has to be waters under the bridge. And that's how it IS and HAS BEEN for most of the time. What's made the difference is the necessity not of telling what happened, but of explaining how and why, of weaving the story together and telling consequences. That is something I've never done before because I don't you don't. We think of our lives in floating episodes whereas a book demands a continuous thread of sense. I thought I had become to used to my own story it could not hurt me any more.

The particular section I've been writing is not a section I've particularly pondered, mused, obsessed over. But I'm having to ponder it now. And maybe that's what's new.

All throughout my life from middle childhood I've fought low moods. They are nothing new to me. What I can't believe is that I'm actually letting this hold me back. And stop me from writing. As I said many times before - here's a simple fact about writing. If you want to write a book you simply must have or develop the strength to plough onwards no matter how uninspired or dispirited you may feel. Otherwise it will not get written.

I know all that and yet still I'm half capsized in a rut.

On a lighter note, reading about her Majesty the Queen last night and seeing her tribe of Corgis I realized they are the roborovskis of the dogs world. All looking exactly the same and yet so distinctive in personality. Greedy swines. And mischievous.

I did a nice stew last night. When I first fried up the lamb, real whiffs of pigs' diarrhoea came up. Then I stared at this "lamb" and realized how suspiciously anaemically light pink it was. I nearly puked. "The *******'s sold me pork!" I thought. Then I cooked it on and realized this was not the case. But it had a very narrow escape from being chucked out the window let me tell you. I loathe swineflesh. Ukkgh!!

In the end it came out rather nicely. The recipe is in the "sediment" post below. Don't forget that half a zuccini/courgette. I made dumplings but squeezed them together too much during the mixing process and so they were more like sheeps' eyeballs than proper fluffy Pigsy Delight from Monkey dumplings. The kind that frequently appeared steaming in the wilderness on a golden bowl from nowhere in the cult 70s Japanese TV series...

Right I have to go and put more dumplings on now. The old slo-cooker's been on about 2 hours now so it's probably frazzling the life out of poor yesterdays half-eaten stew!

All the best everyone!!

Vid of the Day:
Hamster Madness Montage... I thought I'd seen all this before in other clips... not the last bit though... hamsters peering at the sky then backflipping? Never seen anything like THAT before!!

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Is it true America does not have digital television yet?
I was just reading something about Berlin's switchover, first digital switchover in the world, in 2003 which multiplied the number of digital channels available in that city by digital terrestrial (ie by a rooftop aerial) to 27. This by shutting off all the analogue channels. And yet in this country even Mother Hubbard gets about 30 digital channels thru a freeview set top box plus we have five analogue channels. And yet all our analogue channels are getting shut down in Wales next year and here in London in 3 years' time. So what will happen after switchover? Does this mean we will all have 100 channels free through our aerials? Does anybody know about this? Please tell me.

If you want to read the "German TV is brilliant; American is crap" article, click here...

ps i think it is absolute scandal that the tatty british govt allowed scummy home shopping and 24-7 quiz channels and even pay-per-view to be broadcast over our democratic terrestrial airwaves. That is the true meaning of pirate broadcasting! The government hijacking our signals that ought to be broadcasting high definition David Attenborough documentaries 24 hours! Not kids broadcasting FM radio channels of dance music their local audience WANTS to hear and cannot get on Magic FM

And what a scandal awarding digital franchises to"i_iot ~ name the missing letter by spending £1 a minute on 0898-whatever" moneyprinting channels.

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In my dreams!

Hey look I'm leaving comments in Japanese now!!

私の日本の良い一日をお友達に言えば！私が見つかりましたブログを、インターネット上で非常にランダムにします。私の日本の良いことではありませんので私はと言えばカンニングを介してgoogleの翻訳！それはどのように私はこれらの言葉を書くことを、日本を今すぐ！ただ言いたかったことをブログには本当に面白いと少しして、友達のように見えるマイケルジャクソン1980年代後半にします。 （しかし、このように優れた方法！ ）とにかく来て私のブログにする必要があります。私の秘密日記を読むことができますが、オンラインで徹底的に楽しませました。 http://gledwood2.blogspot.comは、その場所に！すぐに私の希望で会いましょう！すべてのベストになります。よりgledwood "Vol 2 " ;->...

(It is still one of my biggest dreams to learn to speak read and write Japanese. When I am rich I will get a Mac notebook loaded with Rosetta Stone software. I find the Japanese people and their culture fascinating... (everything except Japanese food in fact!))

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Wonderful Rouen Pictures

Shall I use this as my new avatar for a while?

Goldfishycarppondstuff.

Enchanting Indonesia Pixx

Amazing Tibet Pictures

Postcards from the World - Ireland

Disney Blog

http://madridquebec.blogspot.com - does anyone know what the huge building, 2nd photo from bottom is (this one)? And where precisely it is? Wow. It's amazing. I'd love to have a house like that, wouldn't you??

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I love banal pictures of everyday scenes from foreign lands. This one depicts an American supermarket checkout.

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You couldn't make it up! Read this letter from an American local council to a local landowner of two "debris"-blockaded streams...

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See the cocaine up Amy Winehouse's nose!

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AARGH! Gotta get a lid for that slow cooker! I came back after three hours of "letting it mull" as I thought it was doing. No! It was not mulling at all.

ALL water had evaporated through the gap where the illfitting frying pan failed to cover as lid. Said stew was dried out, ashy and smelling of burning plastic.

I still threw cold water on it, picked off the black bits and ate it with fresh dumplings though.

Waste not want not - hey!!

Stirring up the Sediment.+ Stew

STIRRING UP THE SEDIMENT! That's certainly what I've been doing lately. It is barely a quarter past four and pitch dark already. Now I have a phone I have a clock again. And alarm clock...

My phone really dosn't look like a telephone at all. To be honest, to me, it looks more like a drinks coaster crossed with a spectacle case for gnomes... clickonthis to view it, but bear in mind it's litup in that picture whereas normally it's shiny, sleek and goldrimmed black...

Many thanks for all the messages I got last night and today.

In reply to some of your queries: Gledeber was a mongrel. I unblocked the sink using citric acid crystals (citric acid + sodium bicarb is the best: it really foams up!)

And I'm powering ahead with my book despite the naysays from my "self".

You know if I'm going to publish my lifestory I have to get comfortable with my life. Now I know I'm a little more "candid" than the average Joe... but not perhaps THAT much ... I have to get used to all this sediment.

And if I feel that I'm exploiting my own suicidal attempts or speaking of them glibly or exposing them to ridicule; I'm only doing in miniature form what I'm going to have to do to make peace with my story having been told to the world when it has been... It's for this reason I'm not interested in smallscale selfpublishing or charity publishing or smallscale publishing. If I'm going to tell my story I want it to go to the entire world. Otherwise I shall have double-compromised. Telling the story was meant to mark a turning point. I think it's going to have to be a 2 volume book though. I don't know.

Well it's about 20 past 4 and dark and I'm tired. Everything is chaos as per usual. I wish I could sleep for ten years. But I can't.

I'm going to miserably pick over my carcasse of a lifestory manuscript now. Wish me luck, please. Take care. Bye.

Gleds
xx

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Right: 7:50pm and I'm making intellectual stew.
These were the ingredients.
One and a third pounds or about 300g neck of lamb chopped up with butcher's murder weapon cleaver thing. Fried in a bit of curry powder.
Half a tin of chopped tomatoes (usually it's a whole tin). A quarter of a tin of water to make up for the tomatoes missing. This forms the stew base.
One enormous onion. Fried after the lamb's done. (If you can't cook let me inform you you have to "seal in" any meat by frying first in a pan with spices. You can do this without spices but it's the very inverse-apex of vulgarity.
Oh yeah. One huge potato. Chopped pretty small. Chucked in slow cooker.
Chuck everything in slow cooker by the way.
One enormous carrot all sliced and chopped up and peeled obviously due to civil liberties restricting New Labour government's pesticides. (Had to get politics into a recipe somehow...)
About 30p 60c worth of okra. Topped and tailed and sliced.
About 30p 60c worth of mushrooms. Slice half. Cut the other half of each into two quarters.
Spices: about 4 teaspoons paprika. About a quarter teaspoon neat red chili powder. About a third teaspoon of ginger (which I slightly regretted at the time but I don't think it's too much). About 2 teaspoons dark soy sauce (darkens the mix if it does nothing else). A small teaspoon thyme. I do have mixed herbs but haven't a clue where they've gone. Two teaspoons gravy granules. These thicken it up. And about a teaspoon or two "Old Dr Brown's Jamaican Curry Powder" which is chock full of MSG (the key to good taste. Sorry I'm not that bourgeois. I love MSG.) No need at all to add salt as it's in everything else.
I was going to add broccoli but it's not very stew-like.
I once asked a stupid bourgeois yoga teacher for "some advice on things to add to a curry" (she was the same person who "didn't want supermarkets in London, at least not big new ones as they're frightfully inconvenient in added traffic" oh bugger off! Anyway so typical of this person who I did love (she moved in as one of seven into my old house. A certain other person didn't want her in but I thought she was fantastic despite her foibles. Anyway she went and recommended the two most non-Indian takeaway curry-ish of things: ie mushrooms which you NEVER get in Indian takeaway (and I never came across in India either) and BROCCOLI possibly the most nonsubcontinental of all vegetables.... well I digress...
Well I think I've mentioned everything that's gone into the pot. Because I have no proper lid and cannot even find a plate to fit I've had to shove a carrier bag over a small frying pan and make that do...
Righto and that's about it...



Video of the Day 1:
This is one of the best videos I've posted up here. Very watchable. Shows us why Princess Diana was such a "star" in the minds of the media...Diary of a Princess: Diana's Last Documentary ~ Landmines in Angola ...

Video of the Day 2:
Sinead O'Connor: Rebel Song Live

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Diary blog of an author:
http://jamieprose.blogspot.com

Really entertaining greetings card shop style baby photos...
http://aramateixenfiloaquestaagulla.blogspot.com